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It is so important to monitor our blood sugar levels, but checking can be inconvenient and uncomfortable. Here are some tricks to help you have quick and painless blood sugar checks.
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Table of contents
How Do You Check Your Blood Sugar??
At first, you may think this is silly to talk about how to check your blood sugar, but truth be told, it’s one of the top questions I hear from people who have diabetes. In today’s video, I’m going to go over the how to’s (from my I’ve learned as certified diabetes care and education specialist… after all, that’s part of my role as an educator) and also tell you some of the little secrets that I use to help get a blood sugar every time I try. I have been checking my own blood sugar for several decades.
Full disclosure, I haven’t’ always checked my blood sugar with a glucose meter since my diagnosis because back then, we didn’t have these wonderful meters. The only way I was able to check was using droplets of my urine, and we know that is not by any means as accurate as checking your blood sugar.
Be Sure To Check Out – Everything You Need To Know About Blood Sugar
Here are the pieces of equipment that you will need
- Soap and water (or an alcohol swab)
- A lancing device
- lancets
- testing strips
- a blood glucose meter
The Basics Of Checking Your Blood Sugar
- Clean a finger; place the testing strip in the meter and follow the prompts to get it ready for your blood droplet
- Take the lancing device and prick your finger
- Place a droplet of blood on the testing strip and wait for the result to be displayed on your meter.
Ok, that’s the overall basics. But I have many people tell me they have trouble getting blood from their fingers.
Here Are Some Tricks
- Use soap and warm water to wash your hands.
- Place the strip in the meter to get it ready for your blood sample.
- Then use the lancing device specifically on the side of a finger. Don’t use the fingertip because it will hurt more since that is where all of our nerve endings are, and we use our fingertips for so many things (typing on the computer or tapping on your phone are some examples), so we may see more bruising. And if we are using the sides of our fingers, we have 20 site options, right? Two sides to every finger that we can rotate with our blood sugar checks. You may find that one finger or another does better with blood flow, but please make sure to rotate the use – don’t keep using the same finger area day after day, or else you will see bruising.
- One more tip is that at times you may need to massage the finger to get a big enough droplet. Try not to massage it too much, but it is an option.
Be Sure To Check Out – Diabetes – Frequently Asked Questions
I’m glad that you watched this video because you are interested in checking your blood sugar, which is a great thing to do. And of course, the easier and less painful it is to check, the more you’ll be willing to do it. Checking our blood sugar helps us with problem-solving our diabetes, and it is great to know where your blood sugar is trending.
Until next time, cheers to your health.
Don’t forget to take a look at our most frequently asked questions.
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